Forget about impeachment

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Forget about impeachment
Sunday, 06 19, 2005

Given the swirling issues against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, which are compounded by the day as new witnesses come forward and new allegations are exposed, there is increasingly a clear case of culpable violation of the Constitution, or commission of high crimes, or betrayal of public trust. Any two-bit lawyer can prepare the complaint without difficulty, the facts and circumstances making out the cause of action being all too clear for even the dumbest legislator to appreciate.

But, should the Opposition - and all those morally and legally convinced that Arroyo cheated in the May 2004 elections and that she has been reigning under criminal circumstances - proceed to file an impeachment complaint?

They should not. If they do, they would only become regretful players of what would eventually turn out as another political spectator sport whose outcome is assuredly certain even before the game is played out. The complaint, I am sure, will be discarded and thrown into the sewers like an aborted fetus. Or if ever, by some unbelievable stroke of circumstance, the complaint does get off the ground, the subsequent impeachment proceedings will only result in the exoneration - and glorification - of the accused. Why so?

Take a look at the present composition of the House of Representatives. Its members, who shall act on the complaint, are not exactly free of the taint of the crime itself. The complainants will be acting like they were going back to the scene of the crime, to secure redress from the co-conspirators in the cheating. What redress can one expect from those who themselves are the perpetrators of the crime, or at the very least accessories who closed their eyes to the cheating and even let the criminal get away?

The mocking taunt of many Administration lawmakers to the Opposition that they should shift the arena of battle from the court of public opinion to the House of Representatives is a deliberate and devious stratagem to legally kill the issues against Arroyo. Like a snowball in hell, there is simply no chance that legalities will win the day for the complainants. The House of Representatives can just easily throw out, like that aborted fetus, the complaint for any imagined deficiency in form and substance. They have the numbers, don’t they?

And what about the Senate, if by any stroke of luck the complaint goes up to it? There are only nine members of the Opposition in the Senate. The rest, for mutually beneficial or underhanded purposes, are cozy with the Administration. Many of them, in the perception of the public, were themselves parties to the crime of stealing the honor and birthright of the Filipino voters in the last presidential elections. One of them knows how to automatically utter with a flair the two-syllable word “noted” at the drop of a hat and the bang of the gavel; one gave Gloria an unbelievably improbable super-majority of votes in a southern province; one, masquerading as a graftbuster, now goes along with every conceivable corrupt act of you-know-who; and another, the voluble articulator, has become the chief apologist and witness-basher for Arroyo in the many charges leveled against her. So, how long then will it take the senators-judges to hear the complaint? Two days? Two weeks? And don’t expect any conviction, either. How can a co-conspirator possibly judge adversely the principal author and beneficiary of the crime?

Impeachment is the last best chance for Arroyo to prolong her stay in power. If I were her, I would demand it, vehemently insist on it, so that the scenario could be played out and I would emerge a winner with a renewed lease of political life. The rule of law, or the constitutional process, would then be made to appear as having been served, when in reality it has been perverted to become the convenient refuge of the accused who flaunted and violated it in the first place.

The last best chance for the Opposition to unseat - or at least weaken - Arroyo is to stay still in the middle of raging storm.

The issues against Arroyo have already taken lives of their own. They will continue to hound her, until by the inevitable workings of fate, she realizes she has lost the right to govern. She should, this early, realize that she is no longer governing, that she remains merely propped up in her throne by the apparatus of power and deception she has masterfully wielded and contrived. Corruption in high places, jueteng, fraud tapes, high prices, widespread poverty and hunger can no longer be camouflaged. Not by her captive media hacks, not even by her deception apparatus that has unwittingly and stupidly given credence to all the allegations against her and her government.

Alternatively, the issues against her will continue to hound her until by some stroke the Filipino people, crushed by the weight of callous immorality and high-handed mis-governance, realize and so decide she has to go, outside of the Constitutional processes.

Until that time, impeachment as a process will only be a distraction, meant to benefit only the one charged, buying her time to consolidate her forces to stay on in power. The victims of the fraud in the 2004 elections will only be given a false sense of hope, a tattered flag twisting in the wind. And the agony of the victims of the crimes committed in the name of poor governance, jueteng pay offs, corruption, and economy gone to the pits will only be prolonged.

Screw impeachment! It is not necessary.


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